50 Fun Facts About Boston Tea Party

Many men who raided the ships at the Boston Tea Party dressed as warriors of which Native American nation?

Mohawk dress was a symbol as much as a mask: the raiders were signalling that they saw themselves as Americans rather than British subjects.

The tea thrown into the harbor at the Boston Tea Party had been grown in which country?

China supplied every chest: the cargo was mostly cheap black tea, with some finer leaf from the province of Anhui.

What did the Tea Act of 1773, the law that provoked the Boston Tea Party, do to the price of legal tea?

Lowered it: the act let the tea's owners undercut even the smugglers. Protesters objected to the tax tucked inside the bargain and to the monopoly, not to the price.

Which Indian leader showed the Viceroy some duty-free salt in 1931 and joked that it recalled the Boston Tea Party?

Mahatma Gandhi had just led a mass campaign against Britain's salt tax, and a British newspaper had already likened one of his protests to the Boston raid back in 1908.

After the Boston Tea Party, many Americans shunned tea as unpatriotic and made which hot drink their favorite instead?

Coffee became the patriotic cup as tea drinking fell away during and after the Revolution, and one future president told his wife in 1774 that he was giving tea up.

Apart from the tea, what was the only item reported damaged aboard the ships during the Boston Tea Party?

A padlock belonging to one of the captains was broken, and the raiders replaced it the next day. They took care to harm nothing but the tea.

At the Boston Tea Party's 200th anniversary, protesters dumped oil drums into the harbor and hanged whom in effigy?

Richard Nixon was the target in 1973: a mass meeting in Boston called for his impeachment and blamed the oil companies for the fuel crisis.

Once the tea was overboard, what did the Boston Tea Party raiders reportedly do before leaving the three ships?

Swept the decks clean, by the usual account, and put back anything they had moved. The crews confirmed afterwards that only the cargo had been touched.

Which Patriot leader called the mass meetings over the tea ships and later defended the Boston Tea Party in print?

Samuel Adams tried to keep the last meeting going as the crowd left, and the tale that he gave a secret signal to begin the raid first appeared nearly a century later.

Which rider carried news of the Boston Tea Party to New York, 16 months before his more famous ride?

Paul Revere set off as an express rider the day after the tea was destroyed, and Patriots in New York cheered what Boston had done.

Which Patriot group, founded in 1765 to fight an earlier British tax, organized the Boston Tea Party?

Sons of Liberty came from every walk of colonial life: artisans, shopkeepers, apprentices and laborers all belonged to the Boston branch that planned the raid.

The tea destroyed at the Boston Tea Party belonged to which British trading firm, then close to bankruptcy?

East India Company warehouses were piled with tea nobody would buy, and Parliament's scheme to sell the surplus in America is what sent the cargo to Boston.

Parliament punished Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party with a set of 1774 laws that colonists gave which name?

Intolerable Acts ended self-government in Massachusetts, and colonists elsewhere feared their own assemblies could be rewritten from London next.

The Boston Tea Party took place about 16 months before which battles opened the American Revolutionary War?

Lexington and Concord are both in Massachusetts, and the fighting there in April 1775 began a war that lasted eight years.

Roughly how many chests of tea were broken open and dumped overboard during the Boston Tea Party?

340 is the count on the owners' own invoice, though many books say 342. Together the chests held more than 92,000 pounds of tea, roughly 46 tons.

Which Founding Father, then a colonial agent in London, said the tea lost at the Boston Tea Party should be paid for?

Benjamin Franklin was not alone: a New York merchant and three colleagues offered the prime minister payment for the losses, and were turned down.

Which British king told Parliament after the Boston Tea Party that the colonists were out to injure British commerce?

George III made the charge in a speech in March 1774, and before that month was out Parliament had passed the act closing Boston's port.

Which Virginia planter disapproved of the Boston Tea Party because it destroyed private property?

George Washington backed the colonial cause all the same, and by July 1775 he was commanding the American army camped outside Boston.

Which tools did the Boston Tea Party raiders carry aboard to smash open the heavy wooden tea chests?

Axes and hatchets did the work, and one participant recalled that he and his companions called their small hatchets tomahawks.

Months after the Boston Tea Party, the Edenton Tea Party of 1774 was a boycott pledge signed entirely by whom?

Women signed it, 51 of them from around a single Carolina port, making it one of the earliest protests organized by women in the American colonies.

Thousands of colonists packed which Boston building, the largest in town, on the day of the Boston Tea Party?

Old South Meeting House drew a crowd of 5,000 or more, close to a third of Boston's population, and the raiders set out as the meeting broke up.

Which royal governor of Massachusetts refused to let the tea ships sail home before the Boston Tea Party?

Thomas Hutchinson sailed for England less than six months later expecting a short visit, and spent the rest of his life there in exile.

Days after the Boston Tea Party, Patriots in which city forced the tea ship Polly to sail back to England?

Philadelphia had a self-styled Committee for Tarring and Feathering, whose broadside warned the Polly's captain what awaited him if he tried to unload.

Anger at Britain's response to the Boston Tea Party led twelve colonies to send delegates to which 1774 gathering?

First Continental Congress delegates petitioned the king for repeal and agreed a colonies-wide boycott of British goods; only Georgia stayed away.

Which Newbery-winning novel by Esther Forbes follows a Boston apprentice silversmith who joins the Boston Tea Party?

Johnny Tremain won the 1944 Newbery Medal and reached cinemas as a 1957 Disney film, and its tea-raid scenes were also released as a classroom short.

What did two congressmen put in a chest marked tea and dump into Boston Harbor in 1998, echoing the Boston Tea Party?

The federal tax code went overboard as a stunt by two conservative lawmakers, one of many later protests to borrow the imagery of 1773.

Besides wrapping themselves in blankets, what did many Boston Tea Party raiders smear on their faces as a disguise?

Soot and coal dust were the usual choice, and one raider recalled blacking his face and hands in a blacksmith's shop on his way to the waterfront.

The first mass meeting about the tea ships, weeks before the Boston Tea Party, overflowed which Boston landmark?

Faneuil Hall could not hold the thousands who turned up, so the meeting moved to a larger building and posted 25 men to watch the first ship.

A fourth tea ship, the William, missed the Boston Tea Party after a storm drove it aground where?

Cape Cod wrecked the William, but 58 chests were salvaged, and when some of that tea reached Boston in 1774 it was hunted down and destroyed as well.

Which British prime minister kept the tea duty that led to the Boston Tea Party and then pushed to punish Boston?

Lord North would not drop the duty because it paid the salaries of colonial governors and judges, despite a warning that Americans would refuse the tea.

At which Boston dock, long since buried under landfill, were the ships of the Boston Tea Party moored?

Griffin's Wharf vanished as Boston filled in its shoreline in the 19th century, and the likely site is a busy street corner that was once under water.

Which ship was the first of the Boston Tea Party vessels to reach Boston, starting a 20-day deadline to unload?

Dartmouth tied up in late November with 114 chests aboard; the law gave it twenty days to land the cargo and pay the duty, and the raid came just before time ran out.

Two Boston Tea Party ships belonged to the Rotch family, whaling merchants based on which New England island?

Nantucket was home port to both vessels, which were American-built and American-owned; only the tea in their holds was British property.

The Rotch family, owners of two Boston Tea Party ships, belonged to which religious group known for plain living?

Quakers built plainly, so the family's vessels were typical cargo carriers with little decoration or fancy finish.

Before the Boston Tea Party, much of the tea drunk in the American colonies was smuggled in from which traders?

The Dutch paid no import tax on tea at home, so smugglers could sell it far below the legal British price, and the Tea Act was written to undercut them.

The three-pence tea duty protested at the Boston Tea Party dated from which set of 1767 laws?

Townshend Acts also taxed glass, lead, paint and paper, but boycotts got every one of those duties repealed in 1770, leaving only the one on tea.

Which British general was made governor of Massachusetts in 1774 to enforce the punishments for the Boston Tea Party?

Thomas Gage was well received at first, but he was recalled in 1775 after the costly British victory at Bunker Hill.

The drive to make tea agents resign before the Boston Tea Party copied tactics used in 1765 against which law?

Stamp Act distributors had been hounded out of their posts across the colonies, and the same pressure made tea agents quit in every port but Boston.

Which American novelist, a sailor in his youth, had a grandfather who took part in the Boston Tea Party?

Herman Melville's grandfather was a young merchant who went on to serve as a major in the Revolutionary War and for many years as a Boston fireman.

Unlike the cargo lost at the Boston Tea Party, tea sent to which southern port was seized by customs officers?

Charleston's tea agents had been pressed into resigning by early December, so no one came forward to claim the chests.

John Crane, the only man hurt at the Boston Tea Party, was knocked out and hidden under a pile of what?

Wood shavings in a nearby shop covered him because his companions thought he was dead; he came round a few hours later.

Ten months after the Boston Tea Party, the tea ship Peggy Stewart was burned by its own owner in which Maryland port?

Annapolis crowds were so angry that the owner offered to torch the brig himself, and it burned to the waterline in front of a great number of spectators.

After the Boston Tea Party, Britain moved Massachusetts's seat of government out of Boston to which town?

Salem took over as capital and nearby Marblehead as the port of entry, while Boston's harbor was shut to shipping until the tea was paid for.

Which Boston public house, a haunt of Patriots and Freemasons, is said to be where the Boston Tea Party was planned?

Green Dragon Tavern had Masonic meeting rooms on its first floor and secret Patriot gatherings in its basement, earning the name Headquarters of the Revolution.

Which Boston shoemaker became a celebrity in the 1830s as one of the last living veterans of the Boston Tea Party?

George Hewes was tracked down by a writer in upstate New York in 1833, and two biographies of him helped the name Boston Tea Party catch on.

The year before the Boston Tea Party, Rhode Island colonists boarded and burned which British customs schooner?

Gaspee had run aground while chasing a packet boat, and men from Providence rowed out that night and burned it to the waterline.

Francis Akeley holds which distinction among the men who took part in the Boston Tea Party?

The only one arrested, he was caught and imprisoned, while most of the others kept their part secret for years and some never admitted it at all.

During the tea boycotts before the Boston Tea Party, New Englanders brewed a local substitute named for which region?

Labrador tea grew wild at home, and activists pushed it as a patriotic stand-in when colonists pledged to give up the taxed British leaf.

Most of the chests emptied at the Boston Tea Party held which black tea, the commonest and cheapest variety aboard?

Bohea filled 240 of the chests; traders had stretched the name of one mountain-grown tea to cover almost any black tea.

A deadly famine in which Asian region slashed the income of the firm whose tea was lost at the Boston Tea Party?

Bengal starved from 1769 to 1773, and the collapse in revenue left the tea's owners on the verge of bankruptcy just as their unsold stock piled up.